For nearly two weeks, French jets and helicopters have beenhitting carefully selected targets around rebel-held Maliantowns such as Gao and Timbuktu, while African troops gather fora planned ground offensive against the Islamist forces.

Last week's bloody seizure of a gas plant in neighbouringAlgeria by Islamist guerrillas opposing the French action inMali - in which at least 37 foreign hostages were killed -heightened fears in Africa and the West that Mali's north couldbecome a launchpad for international attacks by al Qaeda.

After halting a surprise Islamist offensive southwardstowards Mali's capital Bamako, French ground troops and Malianarmy soldiers backed by French armoured vehicles are securinglocations recaptured from the rebels in the last few days.

At one of these, Diabaly, a town of mud-brick homes 350 km(220 miles) north of Bamako, jubilant residents welcomed foreignreporters and showed them munitions abandoned by the fleeingIslamist fighters, including several six-foot long shells.

Charred rebel pick-up trucks destroyed by the French air strikes were also visible amid the mango trees.

The U.N.-mandated intervention in Mali was originallyconceived as "African-led, African-owned", but with the Malianarmy in disarray and African neighbours scrambling to deploytroops, France has taken the lead in the operation.

Amid widening international support for the Mali operation,the European Union is preparing a 450-member mission to helptrain the Malian army while the United States and Europeangovernments are helping fly in French troops and equipment.

Voicing U.S. backing, Secretary of State Hillary Clintondescribed the internationally-backed intervention in Mali as aresponse to "a very serious, ongoing threat" posed by theregional affiliate of al Qaeda and its local allies.

"We are in for a struggle but it is a necessary struggle. Wecannot permit northern Mali to become a safe haven," she said inWashington, referring to Malian elements of al Qaeda as not onlya "terrorist syndicate" but also a "criminal enterprise".

African governments, critical in the past of what they sawas meddling by former colonial powers like France, are nowembracing the French-led action as a way to avoid a broadeningIslamist insurgency in Africa.

"All of the African continent, all its heads of state, arehappy about the speed with which France acted and with France'spolitical courage," African Union Chairman Thomas Boni Yayi, whois president of Benin, said during a visit to Germany.

Nigeria, Africa's No. 1 oil producer, is contributing 1,200troops to the Mali intervention force, even though it isstruggling to control a bloody Islamist insurgency at home bythe sect Boko Haram. U.S. and African military officials sayBoko Haram has links with al Qaeda and its allies in Mali.

"If it is not contained, definitely it will spill into WestAfrica... It is one of the reasons we have to move fast,"Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan told a panel at the WorldEconomic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

South African President Jacob Zuma, who leads Sub-SaharanAfrica's biggest economy, said the Mali situation would figurehigh on the agenda of an African Union summit this weekend.

"It is not just Mali. It is Chad, it is Niger, it isMauritania," Zuma told Reuters in an interview in Davos, addingthat South Africa could play a role in Mali if asked to by theAfrican Union as the continent's top representative body.

TIMBUKTU "GADDAFI HOUSE" HIT

Among the rebel targets in Timbuktu hit by French airstrikesin the last few days was a house built there by the late Libyanleader Muammar Gaddafi, which Islamist militants were using as abase, local residents said.

The Islamist alliance in the north, which groups al Qaeda inthe Islamic Maghreb and the Malian militant groups Ansar Dineand MUJWA, holds the major towns of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal.

Mali's state radio reported that, besides the Gaddafi housein Timbuktu, rebel fuel and weapons depots around the fabledSaharan trading town were also bombarded in the French raids.

With these keeping the rebels on the defensive, militaryexperts say the swift and effective deployment of African groundforces is crucial to sustain the momentum of an offensiveagainst the Islamists and prevent them melting away into emptydesert or rugged mountains near the Algerian border.